agroecology & the struggle for food sovereignty in the americas

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Agroecology and

the Struggle forFood Sovereigntyin the Americas

A collaborative project of the International Institute forEnvironment and Development (IIED), the IUCNCommission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy(CEESP) and the Yale School of Forestry & EnvironmentalStudies (Yale F&ES)


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Agroecology and

the Struggle forFood Sovereigntyin the Americas

A collaborative project of the International Institute forEnvironment and Development (IIED), the IUCNCommission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy(CEESP) and the Yale School of Forestry & EnvironmentalStudies (Yale F&ES)

Avery Cohn, Jonathan Cook, MargaritaFernndez, Rebecca Reider, and CorrinaSteward, editors

Reclaiming Diversity and Citizenship

Series editor: Michel Pimbert


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Published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Yale School of

Forestry and Environmental Studies (Yale F&ES), and the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic

and Social Policy (CEESP).

The International Institute for Environment and

Development (IIED) is an international policy research

institute and non governmental body working for more

sustainable and equitable global development. IIED acts as a

catalyst, broker and facilitator and helps vulnerable groups

find their voice and ensure their interests are heard in

decision-making. Environmental sustainability is a core

concern but not at the expense of peoples livelihoods.

The IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and

Social Policy (CEESP), is an inter-disciplinary network of

professionals whose mission is to act as a source of advice on

the environmental, economic, social and cultural factors that

affect natural resources and biological diversity and to provideguidance and support towards effective policies and practices

in environmental conservation and sustainable development.

The Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

(Yale F&ES) is a graduate and professional school within Yale

University that engages in teaching, research, and outreach in

broad areas of environmental science, policy and management.

Its graduates have assumed influential roles in government,

business, nongovernmental, and educational organizations

around the world and its faculty has produced seminal work in

many areas, including forestry, ecosystem ecology, industrial

ecology, and environmental law, policy, and economics. Its goal

is to be a global school of the environment, one that examines

environmental problems by accounting for people, their

communities, and their economies.

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Yale School of Forestry and

Environmental Studies (Yale F&ES), and the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social

Policy (CEESP), 2006

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the

views of IIED, its partners or the project donors.

Extracts from this book may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes without permission, provided

full acknowledgement is given to the authors and publishers as follows:

Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas,

Avery Cohn, Jonathan Cook, Margarita Fernndez, Rebecca Reider, and Corrina Steward, eds.

IIED, CEESP and Yale F&ES.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1 843 69601 0

Printed by: Russell Press, Nottingham, UK on Greencoat Velvet Recycled Paper

Designed by: Piers Aitman, www.piersaitman.co.uk

International Institute for Environment and

Development (IIED)3 Endsleigh Street,London, United KingdomWC1H 0DDTel: +44 (0) 20 7388-2117Fax: +44 (0)20 7388-2826email: [email protected]: http://www.iied.org

Commission on Environmental, Economicand Social Policy (CEESP)C/o CENESTA: Centre for Sustainable Development5 Lakpour Lane, Suite 24IR-16936 Tehran, Iran

Tel: ++(98 21) 2296-4114/5/6Fax: ++(98 21) 2295-4217Commission e-mail: [email protected]: http://www.iucn.org/themes/ceesp

Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies205 Prospect StreetNew Haven, CT 06511USATel: +1 (203) 432-5100Fax: +1 (203) 432-5942Website: http://www.yale.edu/forestry/


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Contents

Foreword vii

Michel Pimbert and M. Taghi Farvar.

Acknowledgements x

Executive Summary xiii

Avery Cohn and Jonathan Cook

Introduction

Sustainability and Social Justice in the Global Food System: 1

Contributions of the Yale Workshop

Kathleen McAfee

Featured Articles

Food Security and Trade Reconceived 16

Corrina Steward and Jonathan Cook

An Expanding Interface with Agriculture Will Change Global Conservation 26

Karl S. Zimmerer

A Whole-System View of Agriculture, People, and the Rest of Nature 34

Richard Levins

Academia and Social Movements 50

Avery Cohn

Panel SummariesVoices From the North and South: Finding Common Ground 54

Rebecca Reider

Case Study: Tales From Guatemala 60

Eric Holt-Gimnez

Case Study: Food Sovereignty in the Mixteca Alta 64

Phil Dahl-Bredine

Food Security and Food Sovereignty: Production, Development, Trade 68

Rebecca Reider

Farming, Forests, and Biodiversity 76

Avery Cohn

New Farmers, New Consumers, New Networks 86

Corrina Steward

Case Study: From Local to National: Scaling Up Agroecology in Brazil 94

Jean Marc von der Weid


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Case Study: Living the Amazonian Dream:

Breaking Boundaries through Market-Oriented, Small-Scale Agroforestry 102

Corrina Steward

Case Study: Cultivating Community, Food, and Empowerment: 106Urban Gardens in New York and Havana

Margarita Fernndez

Breakout Session Reports

Food Sovereignty 112

Kathleen McAfee

Farmer Identity, Organizations, and Networks 119

Seth Shames

Changing Pressures on International Trade 122

Kelly Coleman

Relationships Between Export Markets and Local Self-Reliance 126

Jonathan Cook

Urban/Rural and Producer/Consumer Relations and Food Systems 130

Alder Keleman

Education and the Diffusion of Agroecological Practices 134

Rebecca Reider

Practicing Agroecology, Using Local Knowledge 138

Margarita Fernndez

New Farmers 142

Avery Cohn

Biodiversity, Conservation, and Ecosystem Services 146

Corrina Steward

Interviews

Alberto Gmez Flores, National Union of Autonomous Regional 150

Peasant Organizations (UNORCA)

Ronaldo Lec, Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute (IMAP) 154

Jess Len Santos, Integral Peasant Development Center of the Mixteca (CEDICAM) 160

Jos Montenegro, International Center for Sustainable Rural Development (CIDERS) 164

George Naylor, National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) 170

Biographies of workshop presenters 178

Biographies of the editors 184

Participants in workshop 186

Resources 191

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vii

Foreword

Across the globe, a significant number of local livelihoods and biodiverse

environments are still sustained by a rich variety of local food systems. It is

noteworthy that half of all working people worldwide are farmers and small-scale

producers1. Most of the worlds farming population live in the South and, whilst

smaller in numbers, many people are still involved in community and family farming

in the North. Farmers and other people associated with localised food systems

(millers, butchers, carpenters, bakers, small shopkeepers) live in ecosystems of

vital importance for human well-being and the renewal of nature. These range from

relatively undisturbed ecosystems, such as semi-natural forests; to food-producing

landscapes with mixed patterns of human use; to ecosystems intensively modified

and managed by humans, such as agricultural land and urban areas.

Such localised food systems are the foundations for peoples nutrition, incomes,

economies and culture. They start at the household level and expand to

neighbourhood, municipal and regional levels. And localised food systems depend

on many different local organisations to coordinate food production, storage and

distribution, as well as peoples access to food. Moreover, the ecological and

institutional contexts in which diverse food systems are embedded also depend on

the coordinated activities of local organisations for their renewal and sustainability.

Both the contributors to and publishers of this book believe that in the search for a

more liveable world we must find alternatives to the corporate enclosure of food,

land, biodiversity and the environment. In this search we must critically assess and

build on the potential offered by more autonomous local food systems andorganisations. Locally-determined approaches and organisations, while neither

perfect nor always equitable, play critical roles in sustaining farming, the

environment and peoples access to food and natural resources.

1 Small-scale food producers are those women and men who produce and harvest field and tree crops as well

as livestock, fish and other aquatic organisms. They include smallholder peasant/family crop and livestock

farmers, herders/pastoralists, artisanal fisherfolk, landless farmers/rural workers, gardeners, forest dwellers,

indigenous peoples, and hunters and gatherers, among other small-scale users of natural resources for foodproduction. Among indigenous peoples who live off the land, some are farmers, whilst others are hunters and

gatherers or pastoralists.


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Indeed, the right to land, food and environmental sustainability will largely depend on

an alternative food sovereignty policy framework that empowers local organisations to

manage their ecological and institutional contexts. The fundamental principles of food

sovereignty include the right to food and the right to land; the right of each nation orpeople to define their own agricultural and food policies; the right of indigenous peoples

to their territories and the right of traditional fisherfolk to fishing areas; a retreat from free

trade policies whilst prioritising the production of food for local and national markets; an

end to the dumping of cheap food on southern markets by rich nations; genuine agrarian

reform; and peasant-based sustainable, or agroecological, farming practices.

These are not the easy options. The dominant rules that govern food and agriculture

are not designed to strengthen autonomous local organisations but instead to give

professional control to the state and corporations. Policies and institutions facilitate

international trade rather than local trade and markets. Mainstream agriculturalresearch largely ignores agroecologys potential to develop agro-ecosystems that

mimic the biodiversity levels and functioning of natural ecosystems to control pests,

enhance yields and maintain soil fertility. Such systems reduce producers

dependence on suppliers of costly external inputs. Indeed, there is a fundamental

conflict between a global food system of centralised, corporate-driven, export-oriented

industrial agriculture and one that is more decentralised and smaller-scale, with

sustainable production patterns primarily oriented towards domestic markets, meeting

local needs and enhancing local control over the labour process and its end uses.

Regenerating localised food systems means shifting away from uniformity,concentration, coercion and centralisation towards diversity, decentralisation,

dynamic adaptation and democracy. This is what the struggle for food sovereignty

and agroecology is all about.

As vividly described in this book, new social movements for food self-reliance and

the right to land and other resources are arising worldwide. Throughout Latin

America, and in much of Africa and south and south-east Asia, farmers, pastoralists,

women, indigenous peoples and migrants are getting organised and linking together

with their counterparts in the North. They are gaining support from scholars,

activists and progressive policymakers. Together, they are challenging liberal views

of citizenship as a set of rights and responsibilities granted by the state. Instead, in

the context of locally-determined food systems citizenship is claimed and rights are

realised through peoples own actions. In this way, farmers, indigenous peoples,

fisherfolk, food workers and other citizens are creating a sense of hope and militancy

despite the repression that many endure.

Focusing on the Americas, the contributors to this book offer empirically-based

analysis, experiences, critical reflections and lessons that are directly relevant to the

well-being of people and nature everywhere. The emerging movement for

agroecology and food sovereignty they describe is faced with the huge challenge of

Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas

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recreating a democratic political realm as well as autonomous food systems in a

diversity of contexts.

This publication originated at an international workshop held at the Yale School of

Forestry & Environmental Studies in New Haven, USA, April 15-17, 2004. Theworkshop, entitled Food Sovereignty, Conservation, and Social Movements for

Sustainable Agriculture in the Americas, was developed under the direction of Dr

Kathleen McAfee. It brought together students, scholars and practitioners from the

Americas to exchange ideas about new research, on the ground practice, and the

social movements that are working to build more self reliant, sustainable, and

socially just food systems.

The publication is being published jointly, in Spanish and English, by the

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the IUCN2

Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP) and the Yale

School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (Yale F&ES).

For CEESP, this publication offers guidance on how to implement IUCNs resolution

on food sovereignty, which was adopted by IUCN members at the 3rd World

Conservation Congress, Bangkok in 2004. This international resolution, entitled

Promoting food sovereignty to conserve biodiversity and end hunger (Resolution

3.017), calls for food sovereignty to be taken into consideration in the work of IUCN,

its commissions and its members. It also requests IUCN to take on specific activities

related to food sovereignty in its own programme of work.By publishing this volume in its Reclaiming Diversity and Citizenship Series, IIED

seeks to encourage critical debate on the future of food, farming and the environment

outside mainstream policy and conceptual frameworks. For both conservation and

development communities, this stimulating collection of papers is indeed a

significant and refreshing contribution to learning our way out of the current

impasse of industrial farming and mainstream conservation.


ix

2 The World Conservation Union (IUCN) is the worlds largest and most important conservation network. The

Union brings together 82 states, 111 government agencies, more than 800 non-governmental organisations

(NGOs) and some 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries in a unique worldwide partnership. The

Unions mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrityand diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically

sustainable. For more information see: www.iucn.org

M. Taghi Farvar

Chair, Commission on Environmental,

Economic and Social Policy,

IUCN-CEESP

Michel Pimbert

Director, Sustainable Agriculture,

Biodiversity and Livelihoods

Programme, IIED


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Acknowledgements

This publication is based on the workshop Food Sovereignty, Conservation, and

Social Movements for Sustainable Agriculture in the Americas, held at the Yale

School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in April of 2004. Many of the articles

are summaries of speaker presentations and breakout session discussions that took

place at the workshop. In addition, the publication includes academic pieces that

reflect on issues raised during the workshop; case studies of local struggles and

successes in the U.S. and Latin America; and interviews with farmers and farmer

representatives who presented at the workshop.

This note is principally to express our admiration and gratitude, first and foremost to

the small farmers, NGO representatives, academics, activists, and government

officials who are working around the world to create a society where farmers have

the right to choose what they will grow and how they will grow it; where trade

policies respect and ensure sustainable and sovereign livelihoods for rural and urban

residents alike; where traditional and innovative sustainable agriculture practices are

supported by governments; and where collaboration between these diverse actors

guarantees that these goals are met.

This workshop and publication would not have been possible without the financial

and logistical support of the following institutions: Yale School of Forestry &

Environmental Studies; Yale Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies; Edward

J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund; Yale Center for International and Area Studies;

Yale Center for Globalization Studies; Yale Agrarian Studies Program; Yale Tropical

Resources Institute; Coalition for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment (Yale FES);and an anonymous donor. We are very grateful for your contributions.

We would like to give special thanks to Dr. Kathleen McAfee, who at this time was

a professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, for initiating

this project and serving as a guide to the student organizing committee.

We would like to give special thanks to the following individuals for their hard work

before and during the workshop: Cecilia Blasco Hernandez, Phil Dahl-Bredine,

Christiane Ehringhaus, Juan Carlos Espinosa, Catherine Murphy, Christian Palmer,

and Angela Stach for serving as simultaneous translators; Avery Cohn, Kelly

Coleman, Jonathan Cook, Margarita Fernandez, Alder Keleman, David Kneas,

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Kathleen McAfee, Rebecca Reider, Seth Shames, Corrina Steward, and John Tuxill

for conceptualizing, raising funds for, and organizing the workshop; and the following

individuals for their varied efforts: Irene Angeletti, Christopher Bacon, Alan Brewster,

Bill Burch, Amity Doolittle, Gordon Geballe, Mary Helen Goldsmith, Laura Hess,Michelle Huang, Jude Joffe-Block, Cindy Kushner, Tomas Lanner, Ernesto Mendez,

Sarah Morrill, Christian Palmer, Carol Pollard, Beatriz Riefkohl, Melina Shannon-Di

Pietro, Elizabeth Shapiro, James Gustave Speth, Josh Viertel, Jeannie Wong, and

anyone else that we have may have forgotten. We would also like to thank all of the

attendees, who traveled from far-reaching places to attend the workshop and

brought with them a diverse set of experiences and ideas that made for stimulating

exchanges.

Finally, the editors would like to extend a particular thank you to the speakers at the

workshop, who came from across North, Central, and South America to share theirexperiences; and the authors who contributed to this publication. Their stories of

successes and continuing struggles were the inspiration for this publication. We

would also like to thank the photographers for their contributions: Phil Dahl-Bredine,

Juan Carlos Espinosa, David McGrath, Jose Montengegro, and Steve Taylor. We

appreciate the time offered by Liana Hoodes ad Doron Comerchero for reviewing

parts of the publication and providing their constructive criticisms. We thank Jane

Coppock from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Publication Series

for her general support and for specific help with copy editing.

The Editors


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Executive SummaryAvery Cohn and Jonathan Cook

Across the Americas, small farmers are continuing a long tradition of sustainable

agricultural practices with support from international organizations and university

researchers. But these farmers face tremendous economic pressures from abroad.With cheaper food imports underselling locally produced goods and national

economies stumbling under crushing foreign debt, markets for local crops are

shrinking. There are fears that proposed free trade agreements in Central America,

the Andes, and across all of Latin America (the Free Trade Area of the Americas)

could fill national markets with more subsidized crops from the United States and

other agricultural heavyweights in the region.

In cities and the countryside, in governments and grassroots movements, people see

many dimensions to issues that powerful decision makers often reduce to the dry,

abstract language of quotas and tariffs. They are underlining the importance of anagricultural model that protects environmental services, local economic

opportunities, and cultural diversity in addition to profits for agribusiness and

increased trade. Many organizations are calling for a new focus on food

sovereignty as a universal goal. They begin by declaring that food security the

ability of people to access enough food for an active and healthy life, as the World

Bank puts it is an essential human right. Even more strongly, however, they

emphasize the importance of nations and the communities within them retaining a

certain degree of control over their food supply.

The regional food sovereignty movement has increasingly made its presence felt ininternational political debates and trade negotiations, as was seen at the 2003

World Trade Organization meetings in Cancun. It comprises rural organizations of

peasants and farm laborers, herders and fishers, and the international NGOs that

coordinate exchanges among them. Many of these actors are also working for

alternative approaches to rural development and ecosystem conservation. Across the

Americas, farmers are developing and applying principles of agroecology, using both

traditional and new methods of polyculture, biomass recycling, and biological pest

control; preserving crop genetic diversity; and reducing inputs of external energy and

chemicals.


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Exploratory Research

In the summer of 2003, four graduate students from the Yale School of Forestry and

Environmental Studies and their advisor, Professor Kathleen McAfee, began working

together to examine how changing economic conditions are affecting farmers in

different parts of Latin America, and how farmers are responding. Elizabeth Shapiro

and Professor McAfee interviewed indigenous Mixtec farmers in the highlands east

of Oaxaca, Mexico, who are struggling to maintain their crop and livestock genetic

resources despite trade liberalization and the integration of their region into

transnational agro-food systems. In the Ecuadorian Andes, Jonathan Cook found that

indigenous farmers in the cordillera west of Latacunga are embracing selective

market opportunities to expand their incomes and support their livelihoods. But they

are also working hard to protect and enhance their traditional farming methods,

ways of life, and rural communities.

Similarly, Corrina Stewards research highlighted how small-scale family farmers are

struggling to maintain their agricultural livelihoods in the Brazilian Amazon through

a campaign spearheaded by the Rural Workers Union (STR) and sponsored by a

handful of non-governmental organizations. The onset of mechanized soy farming

there has worsened socio-economic conditions for smallholders (colonos).

Finally, in Tacuba, El Salvador, Avery Cohn focused on a group of agrarian reform

cooperatives and researchers who are working to resist a boom-and-bust pattern in

coffee prices by developing their own terms for coffee production.They are cautiouslyseeking involvement in alternative markets like fair trade and organic without

compromising food sovereignty. In Tacuba, 21 local children starved to death in

2001 at a time when coffee prices had dropped to their lowest levels in fifty years.

All over the highlands of Central America, similar tragedies have stemmed from

incentives that promoted the cultivation of export cash crops like coffee at the

expense of regional food crops.

All of these projects found similar evidence that small farmers across the Americas

are confronting a severe structural crisis exacerbated by trade liberalization. In each

case, social movements emerged from the crisis, struggling for food sovereignty,social justice, locally important environmental services, and access to land for small

farmers. Evaluating these movements alternative visions of development, goals, and

effectiveness is essential in order to strengthen the movements long-term impacts.

Furthermore, there is a need to improve communication between the movements,

since their work stems from similar root causes.

An International Workshop

Facing the economic and ecological barriers to sustainable and sovereign food and

agriculture systems will require cooperation among diverse actors in multiple


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Left: Participants in the New Farmers breakout

session. Photographer: Juan Carlos Espinosa.

Below: Jess Len Santos and Ronaldo Lec at

the breakfast session on farmer identity.

Photographer: Juan Carlos Espinosa.Bottom: Members of the Biodiversity panel, from

left to right: moderator Elizabeth Shapiro;

presenters John Tuxill, Robin Sears, Ivette

Perfecto, and Ronaldo Lec. Photographer: Juan

Carlos Espinosa.


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countries, including farmers, consumers, non-governmental organizations,

conservationists, and researchers from Latin America and North America. For that

reason, a group of students at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies,

under the guidance of Professor McAfee, organized a three-day workshop from April15-17, 2004 entitled Food Sovereignty, Conservation, and Social Movements for

Sustainable Agriculture in the Americas.

The workshop provided students, scholars, activists, farmers, and practitioners with

an opportunity to exchange their experiences with cutting-edge research, on-the-

ground practice, social movements, and national and international policies in order

to discuss shared principles and pathways for future action. Through a combination

of panel presentations, discussion groups, and informal interactions, the workshop

sought:

To provide an interactive space for the formation of cross-cultural alliances

between the U.S. and Latin America

To examine the political, economic, cultural, and ecological dimensions of food

sovereignty

To generate and exchange academically informed and practically applicable

knowledge.

With interest in sustainable agriculture growing rapidly at the School of Forestry and

Environmental Studies, the workshop also sought explicitly to include issues relevant

to U.S. farmers. Urban agriculture, U.S. farm policy, the plight of the family farm,

and the local foods movement were among the themes discussed. Through the

conscious juxtaposition of experiences from North and South, the workshop sought

to underline how local, national, regional, and global forces are interacting, and how

small farmers across the Americas are facing similar challenges.

A Guide to this Report

Throughout the workshop, a recurring question was how to build stronger

relationships between academics and practitioners, including farmers and NGOs,

working at the intersection of food, agricultural, and environmental issues. In that

spirit, the organizers have compiled this report, which synthesizes workshop

proceedings, expands on insights derived there, and provides concrete

recommendations to academics, policy-makers, farmers movements themselves,

and other audiences. By facilitating the exchange of knowledge, experiences, and

resources, academic institutions can promote policies that better reflect lived

realities in marginalized rural communities. However, this report does more than list

policy options it situates them in the rich backgrounds and diverse experiences of

workshop participants, including interviews and personal reflections alongside more

recognizably academic writings. Presentations at the workshop emphasized the


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critical yet frequently obscured connections between abstract-sounding policies and

the daily experiences of real people. The report is structured along similar lines.

The first section introduces and expands on key themes of the workshop and the

report itself. The introduction by Kathleen McAfee frames the links between criticalissues of global agriculture, trade, and the environment. Jonathan Cook and Corrina

Steward urge policy-makers to reconsider the critical importance of just access to

food production and consumption when developing relevant trade policy. Richard

Levins urges an expanded understanding of agricultural products as more than just

food. Karl Zimmerer describes emerging conservation challenges related to the

increasing recognition of the importance of the environmental services provided by

agro-biodiverse farms. And Avery Cohn examines roles for academia to play in

furthering many of the causes the other featured articles outline.

In the second section, articles by workshop participants explore specific connections

among these larger issues in greater depth. Reports on panels and breakout sessions

summarize the discussions that took place at the workshop. Case studies grounded

in experiences in Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Cuba, and the U.S. offer a closer look

at food and agriculture challenges in different local and national contexts, and

present a number of particularly innovative projects promoting food sovereignty and

agroecology. Interviews with workshop participants from across the Americas put a

human face on the discussions of policy and practice, portraying leaders who are

working to define the food sovereignty and sustainability agenda at the local,

national, regional, and international levels.

Finally, the report closes with tools for change to promote future work on the issues

addressed at the workshop, including a list of resources for further action, and

contact information for participants and their organizations.

The academy can break down traditionally static boundaries between theory and

practice by engaging a broader audience. Our goal is to distribute this report to

policy-makers, foundations, academics, and members of social movements and

farmers organizations alike. We hope this report offers something for everyone.


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Sustainability and Social

Justice in the Global FoodSystem: Contributions ofthe Yale WorkshopKathleen McAfee


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Introduction

The earth at the outset of the twenty-first century is rent by a double crisis. One part

is the ecological crisis. Despite the rise of environmentalism in recent decades,

conservation half-measures have failed. Deforestation and species loss have

accelerated, irreplaceable ecosystems are being destroyed more rapidly than ever,

genetic resources vital for farming and medicine are disappearing, toxic pollution has

increased, and our planet is heating up dangerously fast (Speth 2004). Most

countries, and the United States in particular, are pursuing environmental policies of

distance, delay, and denial.

The other profound global crisis is that of poverty and hunger. In a world where food

production continues to outstrip demographic growth1, about 15 percent of the

population is chronically undernourished. Many more go hungry part of the year or

part of every month. Needless hunger is a result of poverty and the unequal control

of food-producing resources (Sen 1990, 1991). Too many people lack income to buy

food or the means to earn it, or have lost the land they once used to grow food for

themselves and their families. This silent crisis is the root cause of much global

instability and insecurity. Hunger and poverty produce desperation that gives rise

ethnic and religious conflict and terrorism. These, in turn, provide the rationale

although hardly the justification for new wars of conquest and occupation.

A deep misunderstanding the one this report endeavors to set right is the belief

that neither part of this double crisis can be addressed without worsening the other.Many conservationists are convinced that in order to end hunger, more forests must

be felled, more rivers dammed, and more species destroyed. Some believe sincerely

that, given human responsibility for environmental destruction, the only ethical

stance is one that favors nature and other species, regardless of the human

consequences. Many conservationists are deeply troubled by this vexing moral

dilemma. At the same time, many advocates for the poor reject what they perceive

as the elitist and unconscionable stance of preservationism. What gives

conservationists the right, they ask, to decide who will eat and who will not? Whose

natural environment will be fenced off from people?To many policymakers and activists concerned with poverty and development,

conservationism connotes Malthusianism: the 19th-century premise put forward by

Thomas Malthus that human beings, with the exception of an enlightened and

deserving few, will reproduce thoughtlessly until they have destroyed the basis of

their own well-being, namely, natural resources.


1

1 Since 1975, world food production has increased by about 175 percent, substantially more than populationhas grown. According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, there is 16 percent more food per

person on earth than 30 years ago.


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Many environmentalists have moved beyond these discredited Malthusian notions.

They recognize that concepts such as overpopulation and carrying capacity have

no meaning in any absolute sense.2 Some conservationists understand that hunger

in a world of abundance is a reflection of the greatly unjust distribution of the worldssurplus of food. But these are not the conservationist voices most often represented

by well-known environmental organizations or depicted by the mass media. As a

result, pro-poor and pro-nature voices are raised or get used to discredit each

other or to cancel each other out.

However, in this report, geographer Karl Zimmerer points to a promising trend. Many

traditional conservationists, by necessity, are incorporating attention to farmers and

other local resource users into conservation plans, such as those for the ambitious

but troubled Meso-American Biological Corridor. Many have begun to understand

that agriculture and the human needs it meets are concerns as important forenvironmentalism as the untamed nature we have sought to preserve.

The Ecological and Human Costs of Industrial Agriculture

Much of the misunderstanding between conservationists and advocates for the poor

has centered on agriculture. Farming is by far the greatest user of land and

freshwater resources worldwide. More forests are cleared for the expansion of farm

plots, pastures, and plantations than for timber harvests. Does that mean that

farmers are the enemies of forests? Not necessarily, and potentially, not at all. While

agriculture and conservation can be at odds, they can also support each other. Thiswas the finding of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies graduate

students whose field research inspired the workshop on which this report is based

(McAfee 2004).

Agriculture, however, takes many forms. Agriculture in most of the United States

involves large farms or groups of growers under standardized contracts to big

agribusiness firms. These mega-scale operations produce just one or a few crops, in

fields where each plant is genetically identical or nearly so. Fields are plowed,

planted, sprayed, and harvested by petroleum-powered machinery, except when

fruits and vegetables are sprayed and picked by seasonal laborers. Maintainingproductivity in this factory-like farming depends upon the continued application of

manufactured fertilizers and the ever-increasing use of pesticides.

In the meat-production counterpart to monocrop farms, thousands of hogs, cattle, or

chickens are confined in vast lots, fetid pens, or small cages, fed a monotonous


2

2 Which region is overpopulated? New Jersey, which has 1,165 people per square mile, where obesity is

epidemic? Or Bangladesh, which also has many people, 926 per square mile, but where most people eat less

than 2,000 food calories daily and half the children are underweight, but where the average person uses less

than 1 percent of the energy that the average U.S. resident consumes? Which country has more carryingcapacity? Japan, which has a population of 130 million but imports most of its food? Or the Philippines,

which has far fewer people per square mile, but exports food to Japan?


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Below and right: Hunger has long been a problem in the the North and Northeast of Brazil. However, it has little

to do with a need to choose between ecological conservation and poverty. Smallholders farmers have long been

capable of producing ample food for regional consumption. However, just as they were supplanted by powerful

economic interests during the sugar boom, they are again being supplanted by a global spike in consumption

this time of soybeans used as feed. Neither sugar nor soy alleviates global hunger. On the left, residents of an

extractive reserve near Santarm, Par make farinha flour from manioc roots. Across the Tapajs River, a similarstation sits abandoned, the result of land speculation and violence associated with the rise of soy production in

the area. Photographers (respectively): David McGrath and Corrina Steward.

Above right: Kathleen McAfee. Photographer: Juan Carlos

Espinosa.Right: A spiny cactus is used by a Mexican rancher to

maintain an agroforestry system. The cactus prevents cattle

from eating the tree. Photographer: Jos Montenegro.


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mash of grain and recycled animal protein, dosed with hormones to speed their

growth and antibiotics to manage infections.

Because crops and animals are rarely raised on the same farms, potential sources of

fodder and natural fertilizer become wastes and pollutants instead. The spatialseparation of crops and livestock breaks the closed circle of genuine agroecological

efficiency: the recycling of energy and nutrients that accounted for the remarkable

boom in food production in early modern England and the United States (Duncan

1996; Stoll 2002).

Among the results of todays factory farming are degraded and eroded soils, depleted

aquifers, poisoned wells and waterways, and offshore marine dead zones caused

by the runoff of crop fertilizers and animal excrement. Soils that have been

compacted by heavy machinery and deadened by agrochemicals retain less water

and require more irrigation than living soils rich in organic matter and

microorganisms. Monocropping and confined feeding make plants and animals more

vulnerable to disease; the application of pesticides and medicinal agrochemicals

often becomes self-defeating as insects, weeds, and microorganisms develop

resistance and more chemicals or new types of chemicals must be applied.3

Industrial agriculture as we know it today cannot be sustained over the long term.

Industrial agriculture also takes an immense social toll. The required inputs (seeds,

chemicals, machines), as well as crop prices, transportation, processing,

wholesaling, and increasingly, retailing, are largely controlled by a small number ofhuge, conglomerate firms (Hefferman and Hendrickson 2002; Murphy 2002).

Farmers and animal raisers have little say in what they grow, how they grow it or

care for it, or where and for what price they will sell their livestock or harvests. Many

nominally independent family farmers are virtually indentured to these

agribusiness giants. These farmers bear most of the risk, receive little of the profit,

and are locked into heavy debts and single-product farming systems. Hundreds of

thousands have lost not only their independence, but also their land and livelihoods

to this system. The boarded-up storefronts that line the streets of many U.S.

heartland towns and the half-deserted villages that dot the mountains of Mexico

attest to this social catastrophe.

The social and ecological problems of factory farming cannot be overcome easily.

Many farmers are acutely aware of them, as the interview with George Naylor, head

of the National Family Farm Coalition, demonstrates. Many agronomists, too, are

working hard to address these problems. Unfortunately, their efforts get relatively

little support from federal and state agencies and university agriculture departments.


4

3 Use of insecticides in the United States rose tenfold over 44 years, but the proportion of crops lost to insects

nearly doubled in the same period. See Wargo (1998).


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In fact, the U.S. government promotes high-chemical-input industrial agriculture

throughout the world.

The main emphases of U.S. farm policy are (a) keeping the existing system

productive and profitable for the politically influential agribusiness firms that benefitmost from it; (b) subsidizing and insuring the exports of U.S. farm products, farm

inputs, and industrial-agriculture methods to other countries; and (c) promoting crop

genetic engineering, a false solution that is an intensification of unsustainable

industrial agriculture, not an alternative to it (see Altieri 2004). Kristin Dawkins of

the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy outlined the contours and consequences

of these policies during the workshop panel on Food Security and Food Sovereignty:

Production, Development, Trade

The Myth of EfficiencyPolicies that promote industrial agriculture are justified by their proponents claim

that large-scale, high-chemical-input, mechanized agriculture is the most efficient

form of farming. Just look at the bounty produced by U.S. farms, these advocates

argue. The United States feeds the world. But foreign food aid from the U.S.

government may do far more to increase hunger and dependence than to reduce it.

Heavy subsidies promote over-production in the United States and Europe. To make

that surplus profitable, U.S. and E.U. agricultural trade policies are designed to open

up markets worldwide for their farm-surplus exports, sold at less than the actual cost

of production. This puts socially and environmentally friendly farms out of business,leaving only those who can afford to purchase imported farm inputs and tailor their

farm crops to the demands of commercial agribusiness.

The high-animal-protein diet favored by this system is extremely wasteful of land,

atypical in human history, and ecologically impossible to reproduce on a global

scale. Its pattern of resource use is unsustainable: modern, mechanized farms are

commonly net destroyers of soil fertility. High-chemical input farming, the livestock

revolution (the globalization of factory farming), and the blue revolution (marine

aquaculture of carnivorous species such as tuna, salmon, and shrimp) all produce

far less food energy than they use in the form of feed, fuel, and labor energy. 4

Common claims about industrial-farm superiority are based on criteria that are

misleading because they are two-dimensional. They take account of yields per unit

of surface area (in hectares or acres). They do not consider the effects on soil, the

third dimension, nor the agroecosystems capacity for future production time being

the fourth dimension (Fernandez, Pell & Uphoff 2002). Standard agroeconomic

criteria are also mono-functional, considering only crop yield prices, while neglecting


5

4 Factory farming uses far more energy than it generates: 9 to 11 energy calories are consumed in theproduction of a single calorie of food energy in factory-farming systems. It takes at least 3 and as much as 20

pounds of seafood protein to produce a single pound of farm-raised carnivorous fish.


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the effects of industrial farming on social well being and culture, on valuable crop

genetic diversity, and on other species. Most agricultural economists consider such

effects to be externalities that are not relevant in measuring farm efficiency.

Free trade policies have led to a surge in U.S. food exports to Mexico and economicdisaster for hundreds of thousands of Mexican small farmers who cannot compete

with cheap, subsidized U.S. corn and beans. Higher U.S. grain-yield figures are often

cited to justify these policies, but such calculations leave out much of the story.

Missing is the vastly greater energy cost of industrial grain production and lengthy

transportation to Mexican grain markets. Missing are the ecological costs: soils

depleted of nutrients and addicted to chemical inputs; water loss; and fertilizer and

pesticide pollution and poisoning. Missing are the human costs: displaced farmers,

disrupted families, lost crop varieties, lost knowledge, and broken cultural bonds.

Moreover, the yield of a single grain from a single harvest season is not a valid basis

for comparing farm productivity. Fields in much of the world are often not planted in

only one crop. In Mexico and Central America, corn is commonly intercropped with

squash, beans, and other legumes, while other useful plants grow along field

margins. The corn plant itself also has multiple uses as green corn for beverages

and treats, dry corn for subsistence for farm families and their animals, and seed

corn for replanting or barter, as well as the many uses made of corn husks and

stalks. Thus, the food and economic value from any field is often greater than that

of the grain alone, but grain yields are usually the only component counted by

economists.

Similarly, family-farmed rice paddies may also produce protein from fish,

crustaceans, and mollusks. Greens rich in iron and pro-vitamin A harvested from

paddy banks may be important nutritionally but dismissed as weeds by

conventionally trained agronomists. Additionally, many small-scale farmers raise

multiple, genetically diverse varieties of staple crops, vegetables, and fruits,

conserving wider crop gene pools and developing new, potentially valuable crop

traits. And, unlike big industrial farms, which have been likened to ecological

deserts, multi-crop, smaller-scale farms, especially those with shade and fruit trees,

windbreaks, hedgerows, and ponds, frequently provide habitat for birds and other

wildlife.

When plant and animal products are not recycled to maintain soil fertility, or when

pesticides and fertilizers destroy beneficial subsoil life, the monetary and energy

costs of farming the damaged land can rise greatly over just a few seasons. Farmers

introduced to chemical fertilizers often report surges in short-term yields, only to find

that after a few years, little will grow without the application of these inputs. Where

farmers lack the wherewithal to purchase agrochemicals or to return plant and

animal wastes to the soil, much more than soil fertility can be lost: the land itself,

and farm families means of feeding themselves. Yet few agronomic or economic


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analyses are carried out over a long enough period of time to measure these grave

losses.

One more problem with most industrial versus smaller-farm comparisons deserves

mention. Advocates of modernized (industrial) agriculture often assert that a singlefarm worker in the U.S. Midwest produces as much grain as several people or even

dozens of people working on non-mechanized, low-chemical input farms. This claim

ignores the labor involved in manufacturing and transporting the machines,

chemicals, and fuel that make factory farming possible.

Moreover, less labor on farms is not always a good thing. Around the world, the loss

of agricultural employment to mechanization has been a major factor in the decline

of rural cultures and migration to swelling cities and abroad. Women, ethnic

minorities, and the landless are often hurt most by this job loss. When people lose

the ability to feed themselves by their own labor, the costs of their nourishment must

be borne by others.

Nobody enjoys endless days of drudgery, and farmers everywhere welcome labor-

saving methods. But the only choice is not between large-scale mechanization and

grinding toil. Multipurpose farms can provide satisfying full-time or part-time

employment, especially when farming is supplemented by rural small industries and

enlivened by rich cultural and civic life.

Producing Food or Producing Money?

Underlying and reinforcing these problems of industrial agriculture is the most

profound problem of all: a growing proportion of farming worldwide that is carried

out for the purpose of making profits rather than producing food. In what Philip

McMichael calls the global corporate food regime (2004), a handful of transnational

firms dominate food production, processing, transport, and retailing (McMichael

2004). Food commodity chains today are truly worldwide. Farm inputs and animal

feeds are transported to distant feedlots and fields in other countries. From these

sites of agricultural production, food commodities often travel again around the globe

before they reach consumers.

The World Trade Organization, the terms of World Bank structural adjustment loans,

and bilateral and regional trade treaties require the liberalization of farm and food

trade policies. This means that developing-country governments may not maintain

farm programs, price supports, or import restrictions designed to protect their own

domestic food producers. Global agribusiness is therefore free to roam the planet,

seeking the most favorable combinations of soils and climate, low land and labor

prices, and technology protections, i.e., enforcement of private patents on seeds

and agrochemicals.


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As noted above, farm subsidies and agro-export subsidies in much of the global

North allow transnational firms to acquire and sell farm products at prices below the

cost of production. The dumping of subsidized food surpluses in developing-country

markets drives farmers off the land, reduces land prices and farm-labor costs, andfosters the concentration of food-producing resources in fewer, larger farms,

organized to produce more low-cost agricultural commodities for the globalized

market. When soils are exhausted, or when farm laborers or contract growers object

to low prices, low wages, or factory-farm practices, global investors can move on to

more favorable sites.

Korean farmer Kun Hai Lee cried WTO kills farmers before stabbing himself to

death before some 10,000 Mexican and other farmers gathered in protest at the

WTO meeting in Cancn in September 2003. His was the most dramatic but, sadly,

only one of thousands of recent suicides by farmers and fishers forced from theirlivelihoods by imported food dumped in local markets for less than its cost of

production.

Positive Alternatives and Signs of Change

In the midst of the crisis caused by globalized industrial agriculture, there are some

very significant and promising counter-trends. People are looking for alternative

principles, policies, and practices. Policymakers and citizens around the world are

questioning free-market fundamentalism as well as centralized socialism, looking

for better ways to understand the global economy and manage the distribution of itsresources.

New social movements for food self-reliance and the right to land and livelihoods

are arising worldwide. Throughout Latin America and in much of South and

Southeast Asia and Africa, farmers, women, indigenous peoples, and migrants are

organizing, linking together with their counterparts in the North, gaining support

from scholars, activists, and progressive policymakers, winning real gains, and

creating a sense of tremendous hope and militancy despite the repression that

many endure.

Countries are breaking away from the neoliberal Washington consensus. Two

decades of global economic liberalization have brought few of the promised

benefits from privatization and deregulated trade. Many governments and many

more social movements are now resisting free trade pressures. The defeat of the

one-sided WTO agenda at Cancn may have marked the beginning of the end of

a half-century of U.S. policy dominance.


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In the United States, food is finally becoming a political issue, amidst E. coli and

mad-cow scares, deepening distrust of food-safety regulators, animal-welfare

concerns, suspicion of transgenic products, and widening awareness that fresh,

local products are safer, tastier, and socially beneficial. Organic food is the fastest-growing segment of U.S. agriculture. Farmers markets and programs that link

farmers directly to consumers are becoming immensely popular in the U.S,

Europe, Japan, Korea, and many cities in the global South.

The racial and class politics of nutrition and food policy are coming to the fore in

the U.S. Peoples of color and working-class communities are recognizing that the

denial of high-quality food, reinforced by public policy and resulting in needless

poor health and shortened lives, is a central dimension of the social injustice they

face. Municipal Food Policy Councils, urban gardens, farmer-community

networks, campaigns to change school lunch menus, and limits on fast-foodfranchises are just some of the ways this issue is being addressed.

Tangible alternatives for farmers are emerging in the form of systems for fair trade

and certification (ecological and social good-practice labels), international

producer-consumer networks, local processing of crops such as coffee, chocolate,

and fruits to add more value to farm exports, and planning for sustainable regional

development. Many options are arising from below, from the real-life experiences

of farmers and other producers, often supported by locally based NGOs,

scientists, and activists rather than being imposed from outside or from above.

After decades of regarding farmers as natures enemy, environmentalists are

beginning to understand that agriculture and conservation must go hand-in-hand.

Now that protected-area projects that ignored local resource users and their

subsistence needs have largely failed, farmers roles in safeguarding biodiversity

and the atmosphere are being documented. Several major environmental

organizations have new programs to promote more sustainable agriculture and

enlist farmers in conservation plans. New social movements are capturing this

trend in the slogan No ecology without equity; No equity without ecology!

Major international declarations and the policies of some national, regional, andmunicipal governments now recognize that food is a human right. (Thus far,

however, few governments protect the right to food. The U.S. government actively

opposes it in principle and in practice.) The vital principles of economic and social

human rights, potentially radical in their implications but for long mere

abstractions in the fine print of international accords, are finally being elaborated

in practical terms.

The principle of food sovereignty is gaining adherents around the world. Food

sovereignty, explained in more detail below, is the ability of countries and

communities to control their own food supplies and food-producing resources.


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Agroecological knowledge for sustainable farming is deepening, enriched by local

farmers experimentation and knowledge, and spreading to hundreds of thousands

of new farmers every year. We now know that agroecology and related practices

can produce food abundantly, reliably, and sustainably and can help guaranteethat those who need food can obtain it. Although little reported in the U.S., there

are a growing number of such successes in the global North and South.

Agroecological Alternatives

Agroecology is an approach to farming that responds to the agronomic inefficiencies

and social failures of conventional agriculture. Agroecological principles and

practices combine time-proven farming methods, new ecological science, and local

farmer knowledge to enhance the yields, sustainability, and social benefits of

farming. Agroecology has been applied mainly but not exclusively by small-scale andresource-poor farmers, making their farming more productive, affordable, and

reliable. Although it has not yet been applied and evaluated systematically across

regions, agroecological farming has already achieved substantial increases in food

production in many localities (Uphoff 2002).

Agroecology practitioners are less interested in conquering and controlling nature

than in working with it, using scientific understanding and close observation of

phenomena such as pest-predator relationships, the ongoing evolution of pest

species, and the effects of soil organisms on plant vigor. Being aware of such natural

processes helps in anticipating and managing agronomic problems. In this way,agroecology is more a method of thinking and a means of applied learning than a

blueprint or formula, as the case study in this report by Jean Marc von der Weid

makes clear.

Agroecologists analyze agro-ecosystems in terms of their composition in three

dimensions, including soils, trees, microclimates, and hydrological cycles, etc., not

just the two dimensions of the flat, bounded farm field. They look at agro-ecosystem

dynamics over time, not just over one harvest cycle. They study nutrient and energy

flow and interactions among organisms soil biota, pests, beneficial insects, other

animals and plants at a range of spatial and temporal scales.

Agroecology aims to reduce risks to farmers and the environment by increasing the

resilience and self-regulating capacities of agro-ecosystems, so that the use of

pesticides and other agrochemicals can be eliminated or minimized. Agroecologists

also work to lower farming costs, waste, and pollution by maintaining more closed

systems than in conventional farming (Altieri 1995; Gliessman 1990). For example,

recycling energy in the form of green manures and animal manures reduces the need

to buy fertilizers from off the farm and turns a cost disposal of animal wastes into

an asset.


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Agroecological thinking encourages the planting and maintenance of a variety of

crops and food sources, with crop rotations and multiple intercropping where

appropriate. It endorses the use of open-pollinated seeds that can be selected,

saved, and bred by farmers, as opposed to hybrid varieties that must acquired anew,usually purchased, for each harvest cycle or at least every few years. In contrast to

monocrop farming, where genetic uniformity is desirable,5 varietal and genetic

diversity within the same crop is often advantageous in agroecological farming.

Genetic diversity reduces the risks of crop failure and allows farmers to improve their

own seed stocks. More complex agroecological systems, especially those that

include permanent crops, often encourage wild species and often support greater

biological diversity on and around farms than do monocultures or even undisturbed

forests.

Agroecologists understand farms not as food factories but as dynamic systemsembedded within complex ecologies that co-evolve with human communities (Levins

and Vandermeer 1990). In contrast to most conventional agronomy and agricultural

economics, the framework of agroecology allows for consideration of so-called

externalities: the environmental, economic, and social costs that are generated by

industrial-farm enterprises but born by the wider ecology and society when farming

is done unsustainably.

Agroecological principles can be generalized, but ecosystems, communities, and

agroecological practices are necessarily place-specific. Agroecology therefore

requires collaborative research and experimentation with farmers and other expertsand continuing inputs of local intelligence. Does this mean that agroecology is

appropriate only for small-scale farms? Not necessarily, since many of its principles

and practices are equally applicable to larger-scale agriculture. But the issue of scale

and place-specificity does point to an important question: are large scale, uniformity,

and the lack of adaptability to various ecological conditions root causes of

unsustainability in conventional agriculture? Will sustainable farming therefore need

to be much more decentralized and varied, even if not entirely small-scale? Because

uniformity in industrial farming is a consequence of the exigencies of profit-driven

agriculture, this is as much a political and economic issue as it is an agroecologyquestion.

Agroecology is not a monolithic movement, but instead a fast-growing international

trend. It is being developed and carried out by locally based and internationally

linked networks of farmers, scientists, and nongovernmental organizations who see

it as an alternative to conventional agricultural technologies designed for large-scale

farms in temperate climates. In Brazil, for example, AS-PTA (Evaluation and Services


11

5 For large farming operations and agribusiness firms, genetic uniformity has advantages related to theexigencies of mechanization and large-scale production and marketing. Identical plants that ripen

simultaneously can be harvested, quality-checked, transported, and processed in bulk.


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for Sustainable Agriculture) is an organization that has been promoting agroecology

with community farming organizations for more than 20 years. Jean Marc von der

Weid, AS-PTAs public policy director, notes in this report that all three national

family farmers organizations [in Brazil] have defined agroecology as their mainstrategic tool to achieve agricultural sustainability.

The interviews in this report with Ronaldo Lec and Jess Len Santos, and the

workshop presentation by Srgio Lopes, illustrate how agroecology is being adapted

by communities in Guatemala, Brazil, and Mexico. The report on the Practicing

Agroecology, Using Local Knowledge breakout session explores the meanings and

uses of local, traditional, indigenous, and scientific knowledge; how power

relations affect the production and control of knowledge; and the differences in the

underlying logics of conventional and agroecological farming. The report on the

Education and the Diffusion of Agroecological Practices session discusses theimportance of farmer-to-farmer networks and participatory research with scientists,

the need for institutional and marketing support for sustainable farming, and the

larger political and economic issues affecting farmers.

The article by Harvards Richard Levins, a pioneer and leading thinker in the

agroecology movement, explains agroecology in relation to the larger context of the

eco-social distress syndrome: the dysfunctional relationships between the human

species and the rest of nature. He poses some challenging hypotheses about the

nature of scientific knowledge; the paradox between increasing sophistication at the

laboratory and the inability of science to grapple with whole, complex systems; andthe social and economic conditions under which a more holistic and effective science

is possible.

These contributions illustrate that for many practitioners, farmers and scientists

alike, agroecology is as much a social as a technological project: a means toward

greater equity, empowerment, and local control over food sources and supplies, and

a space for multiple, alternative definitions and directions of development. all of

which raise the issue of food sovereignty.

The International Movement for Food Sovereignty

The concept of food sovereignty entered international policy debates when it was put

forward at the 1996 World Food Summit by the international farmers confederation

Va Campesina (www.viacampesina.org). Food sovereignty has become a banner

uniting farmers and other rural social movements and international networks of non-

government organizations. These alliances have been working for a decade to right

the injustices that they believe are built into the rules of the World Trade

Organization. To this end, they are developing alternatives to the WTO Agreement on

Agriculture and other policies that subordinate ecologies and human needs to the


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logic of profit. Food sovereignty is a central principle in these alternatives

(www.tradeobservatory.org; www.viacampesina.org).

A simple definition of food sovereignty is the ability of countries and communities to

control their own food supplies: to have a say in what is produced and under whatconditions, and to have a say in what is imported and exported. At the local level,

food sovereignty entails the rights of rural communities to remain on the land and to

continue producing food for themselves and for domestic markets if they so desire. 6

Proponents of food sovereignty maintain that human rights, such as the right to food

recognized in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights, must take priority over WTO rules that protect the putative rights of private

investors to pursue profit. While WTO rules enforce narrowly economic criteria for

trade regulation, a food sovereignty strategy would advance the rights of

governments and consumers to use broader and multiple criteria in trade and

development planning. Sovereignty, as they see it, would permit governments at

various levels to make decisions about imports, exports, investment, credit, and

resource use that discriminate in favor of goods produced according to standards of

ecological sustainability, humane animal treatment, gender equity, fair labor

practices, and other social goals.

Food sovereignty is more than a different set of trade rules; it is a different way of

understanding agriculture and the role of food, farming, and rural life. Food

sovereignty advocates hold that food is first a source of nutrition and only second anitem of commerce. Trade is good, they say, but as a means to social well being, not

as an end itself. They argue that the maintenance of healthy agrarian communities,

backed by national policies to support and protect domestic food production, is a

better guarantor of food security than a globalized agro-food system in which most

countries depend heavily on purchased food imports.7

Food sovereignty is as much an ecological project as an alternative economic

paradigm. Its proponents contend that decentralized, diverse, and locally adapted

farming systems can be more environmentally sustainable than a globalized food

system. Where livelihoods and family goals are tied to the longer-term health andproductivity of the land, they say, farmers have more incentive to conserve and

improve soils, landscapes, and water systems. By contrast, in a globalized food

system dominated by agribusiness, the competitive imperative to maximize profits

compels companies to externalize their environmental costs, shifting them onto the

public and future generations.


13

6 Sovereignty as conceived by these advocates does not apply only to the nation-state, but leaves room for

various patterns of autonomy and interdependency at the community, regional and international levels.

7 In contrast, the architects of U.S. trade and development-aid policies have long argued that developing

countries should give up producing staple crops. Instead, they are advised to pursue their comparativeadvantage by concentrating on exports of tropical speciality crops and products of low-wage labor, while

importing basic foods from more efficient producers such as the United States.


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Proposals to implement food sovereignty and realize the right to food include:

The elimination of food commodity dumping (the sale of crops for less than the

cost of producing them) and the right of countries to protect themselves from such

predatory under-pricing;

National and international mechanisms to limit overproduction, especially the

banning of subsidies for export crops;

The use of domestic reserves and global supply management mechanisms to

ensure adequate but not excessive food production and access;

The right of countries to prevent the ruin of domestic food producers and to foster

rural development by such means as import controls quotas, tariffs, or price

band systems and preferential agricultural credit;

Land reform of a kind that recognizes the individual or collective rights of food

producers, does not saddle them with debt, and puts neglected lands to

productive use;

Rights of access to water and other food-producing resources;

The rights of municipal, state, and national governments to regulate food and

farming in the public interest, including

the right to require labels stating the origins and production methods of foods

and crops; the right to decide whether to accept genetically modified food imports or aid

and whether and on what terms to permit the use of genetically engineered

crops;

the right to ban the private patenting of living organisms and genetic

information.

The rights of farmers to save seeds for exchange, replanting, and improvement,

and to make such full use of patented crop varieties;

Living wages and safe working conditions for agricultural and food-sector workers.

There is currently little support for academic study and policy work to further develop

a food sovereignty approach. Interest in such options has been inhibited by a set of

myths that have gone unquestioned for too long: the myth that trade itself, in an

unequal world, will bring development benefits and the reduction of hunger; the

belief that only high-chemical input industrial agriculture can feed the worlds

population; the illusion that small and medium-scale farms are necessarily less

productive and less efficient; the notion that farmer-centered agriculture represents

a turn away from science; and the idea that farmers care little about and are

inevitably at odds with the natural environment.


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The free trade myth is fading fast in light of the failures of two decades of trade

liberalization. Technology-centered agricultural research and extension have brought

no significant breakthroughs toward greater productivity since the Green Revolution.

The excess productivity that has been achieved by other means agribusinesssubsidies, the extension of agriculture to new land, and the heavy use of fertilizer

has not led to reduced hunger. The environmental costs of industrial agriculture are

no longer possible to ignore.

If the myths persist that agroecology cannot produce abundant food, or that farmer-

centered research and innovation represents a return to a romanticized, pre-scientific

past, those myths, too, can be put to rest by attention to the actual practices of the

movements for food sovereignty and agroecology. A good beginning is a careful

reading of the research results and testimonies of scientists, policy analysts, and

farmers that comprise the contents of this report.


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Food Security and Trade

ReconsideredCorrina Steward and Jonathan Cook


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Across the Americas, farmers, communities, and food are inter-connected by crop

genetic resources, agricultural markets, and sociopolitical and cultural history. Trade

and agricultural policy increasingly dictate regional relations in the Americas. From

the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the proposed Free Trade Areaof the Americas (FTAA) and Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the

accelerating process of trade liberalization has opened overseas markets to U.S.

exports of major food crops like corn, wheat and beans, and shifted Central and

South American economies toward the production of niche crops (vegetables, cut

flowers) and tropical commodities (fruits, coffee) for export.

The classic neoliberal argument is that countries like El Salvador and Bolivia should de-

emphasize subsistence farming and instead specialize in growing export-oriented cash

crops such as coffee and soybeans. Additional cash income and food imports thereby

replace food self-sufficiency. In this sense, lifting protective agricultural tariffs andsubsidies so the argument goes would catalyze economic growth, hoisting small

farmers out of poverty. U.S. trade officials and other supporters of liberalized trade

assert that these policies will benefit Latin American countries through new foreign

investment, increased export opportunities, and an improved standard of living.

Yet, as workshop panelist Kristin Dawkins of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade

Policy (IATP) argued: We now have ten years of experience with free trade. And its

proven its no longer one of these textbook theories that it is not contributing to

development at the community level, or even at the national level, in so very many

countries. Numerous examples from the workshop demonstrate that the neat modelsof neoclassical economic theory are not the reality for millions of farmers in the

Americas or their neighbors in the hemispheres cities. Rather, economic opportunities

are not realized and communities are left to invent their own survival strategies.

A promising alternative approach, however, involves protecting the right to food

security and redefining the means through which it is achieved. 8 Social movements

like Va Campesina and the Landless Peoples Movement (MST) in Brazil emphasize

the importance of individual countries, and the communities within them, retaining

greater control over their food supply. Food sovereignty, as it has been called,

asserts that something so fundamental to daily life as sustenance should not be

subjected to the abstract logic of trade liberalization.9

This brief analysis will review the current trade scenario in the Americas and

highlight the consequences of trade policies that do not take these considerations


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8 According to agroecology.org, the website of Professor Steve Gliessman of the University of California-Santa

Cruz, food security can be defined as the state in which all persons obtain a nutritionally adequate, culturally

acceptable diet at all times through local non-emergency sources.

9 According to What is Food Sovereignty?, a Via Campesina position paper available at http://www.via

campesina.org/art_english.php3?id_article=216&PHPSESSID=432ee9b758220848ae4a2cb0cda74dad,food sovereignty is the peoples, Countries or State Unions RIGHT to define their agricultural and food policy,

without any dumping vis--vis third countries.


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into account. Drawing from experiences and lessons shared at the workshop, we

describe alternative solutions to the current trade liberalization agenda, including

national policies and non-governmental innovations that address farmers rights,

rural livelihoods, economic development, and biodiversity conservation. Lastly, wepoint policymakers toward a set of recommendations that would reform trade

negotiations and domestic policies to better protect these values. We argue not that

food sovereignty should be prioritized over trade policy, but that it should be

integrated into future trade agreements.

Trade Policy without Food Sovereignty: Mexico under NAFTA

The consequences of negotiating trade agreements that do not respect the notion of

food sovereignty are apparent throughout Latin America, perhaps most clearly in

Mexico. Following the passage of NAFTA in 1994, corn imports from the U.S.increased dramatically with the phasing out of Mexican import quotas. Due to U.S.

farm subsidies that artificially depress the cost of production, this corn arrived at very

low prices and promptly began to undersell Mexican corn in local markets.

According to classic theories of competitive advantage, Mexican farmers were

expected to switch to other crops they could grow more efficiently particularly non-

staple crops like fruits and vegetables that could be exported to the north. However,

this argument ignored the subsidies doled out to American farmers, which render

this market far from free. It blithely assumed that farmers were able to convert to

other types of production even though their lands are often unsuited for conversion,and their access to credit, inputs, and extension services has shriveled in the past

decade due to budget cuts by the Mexican government.

Finally, it failed to consider the multiple significances attached to corn in Mexico.

Corn cannot be simply substituted for with alternate sources of income and food; it

is central to daily nutrition, rural life, and national identity. As Laura Carlsen has

written, Small-scale corn production is the millennia-old safety net for all of

Mesoamerica (2003). This explains why corn production has actually remained

steady in Mexico since NAFTA (Henriques and Patel 2004). With neither the

capacity nor the desire to shift to other crops, farmers continue to grow corn evenwhile receiving less and less money for it.

Undercutting the ability of Mexican farmers to supply local markets has led to a

catastrophic series of cascading effects, including greater rural poverty and a wave

of emigration to already overcrowded cities and to the United States. More than 15

million peasants had already left rural areas by 2002 (Cevallos 2002). Such massive

displacement from the land has severe ecological consequences, including soil

erosion, deforestation, and the loss of biodiversity for, as John Tuxill, Ivette

Perfecto, and Robin Sears noted at the workshop, small farmers across the Americas

play a key role in protecting healthy ecosystem function.


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In January 2003, tens of thousands demonstrated in Mexico City, decrying the

governments refusal to provide meaningful support for campesinos battered by

NAFTA. The protests were organized by UNORCA, a national union of peasants

organizations led by Alberto Gmez Flores, a participant in this workshop. UNORCAworks with Va Campesina and other international allies to promote a broad

conception of food sovereignty, and argues that Mexico needs to renegotiate NAFTA

to address serious flaws in its agricultural provisions.

The Current Trade Scenario

Despite its dismal track record with regard to small farmers and rural livelihoods,

NAFTAs agricultural provisions remain the prevailing model for trade agreements

between the U.S. and Latin American countries, like the recently negotiated CAFTA

and the current draft text for the FTAA. Negotiations for a regional pact between theU.S., Ecuador, and Colombia, which began in May 2004, envision a similarly

liberalized agricultural sector.

Yet small farmers in the Andes are already struggling from a combination of natural

disasters (like droughts) and political-economic obstacles. In Ecuador, like Mexico,

the government has slashed rural credit and agricultural extension programs to

comply with structural adjustment policies required by the International Monetary

Fund. Small farmers are concerned about an impending flood of cheap agricultural

products that will arrive in their markets in the wake of a future trade agreement with

the U.S. particularly since this deal could precede any meaningful reform of U.S.agricultural subsidies and supp

agroecology & the struggle for food sovereignty in the americas

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